


Things Better Left Unsaid

by shadow_djinni



Series: All The Stars Aligned [6]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, I Wasn't Kidding About The Child Soldier Thing, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Death, Sendak Has PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 19:16:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13394460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow_djinni/pseuds/shadow_djinni
Summary: There's a reckoning coming; Sendak's past has the power to end their friendship, and Haxus has a choice to make.





	Things Better Left Unsaid

**Author's Note:**

> Alright. SO. Before we get going, in case you missed the tags: Trigger Warning for discussed or referenced child abuse and child death.

The knock comes about fifteen doboshes into Haxus's off-shift, before he actually has time to settle down.  He knows it isn't Sendak almost immediately--the knocks are pitched wrong, the pattern is different.  He hesitates, loathe to set his datapad aside and answer the door in case it’s Commander Yurak or the lieutenant, whose name he still can't remember to save his life. He doesn't feel like giving up his break, but if they really _need_ him, well...He doesn’t have a choice, really.  He tucks the datapad back under his pillow and pads to the door, pressing the panel beside it.  The door slides open.

"Plytox," he says, surprised. The communications officer has all but ignored him since he'd begun hanging out with Sendak.  Why would he--

Oh.  The other engineers stand behind him in the hallway, arms crossed, various looks of concern or disapproval on their faces.

"Haxus, we need to talk," Plytox says flatly.

"...About what?" Haxus asks, eyeing the group.  Something about this sets his gut churning anxiously.

"Just come with me, I'll tell you when we get to the bridge."

"Isn't Commander Yurak--"

"He's busy.  Come on."  And then, just to make sure Haxus won't refuse, Plytox grabs his wrist and tows him from the doorway.  The fur on the back of Haxus's neck stands straight up.  This isn't good.

Plytox leads him from his quarters, and the rest of their crewmates fall into step around them like an escort.  One of them drops off around Sendak's room, which is even stranger.  Sendak wouldn't be up at this time, almost halfway through his own off-shift.  Why would they need to guard his door?  They don't give him time to think about it, though.  Plytox's grip on his arm tightens and tows him along behind like a child's toy on a string.  They lead him on, down the narrow hallways of the ship, until they finally reach the door to the bridge.  One of the other engineers, Keraz, looks Haxus dead in the eye as he opens the door, and Haxus lowers his ears.  The hostility is nerve-wracking and incomprehensible.  Why would they--

Oh.  Oh.   _Sendak_.  This can be about no one else.  Not with the looks on their faces, with the way they hold themselves, with the aggression overlaying their scents.  

The bridge is empty, totally empty.  Haxus has never seen it like that before, and his gut plunges further.  It doesn't seem to faze any of the others, though--Plytox releases his hand and goes straight for the controls, and someone behind Haxus shoves him after.  Haxus staggers and whirls around, baring his teeth.  The person who pushed him, Ivrace, glares back.

"You're taking cues from the _oblate_ now, huh?" Ivrace mutters.

Haxus opens his mouth to snap something nasty in reply, but then Plytox calls from the control panel, "Haxus, are you coming or not?"

Haxus almost says _not_ and heads back to his quarters, but the others stand between him and the only exit, blocking his path.  He straightens his shoulders and stalks to the control panel, folding his arms across his chest.

"What did you want to show me?" he asks.

"You know what you've been hanging around, right?" Plytox asks.

Haxus's eyes narrow.  "You mean _who_."

"Oh no, I definitely mean _what_ ," Plytox says.  "Look, I get it, I really do.  You feel bad for him because he's all on his own, and he's being nice to you because you're being nice to him.  It's an easy mistake to make--"

"It's not a _mistake_ \--"

"--One you're making because you don't know any better."

"And you do?" Haxus counters.  "Sendak's not like the rest of them, I swear.  He's a--"

"Oh please, tell me you're not going to call him a _sweetheart_ or something like that," Plytox huffs, and Haxus shuts his mouth.  He had, in fact, been about to call Sendak a sweetheart.  "You know he's hiding things from you, right?"

"He's _traumatized_ , and he has every right not to tell me things if he doesn't want to."

"You ever think he might not be telling you things because he knows you'll _hate_ him if you know what he did?"

Something cold settles in the pit of Haxus's stomach.  "Look, if you're just going to be an asshole, I'm going back to my quarters to get a nap."

"I'm trying to protect you!" Plytox protests.  "You don't know what Sendak's capable of, what he's already _done_."

"I don't know what you have against Sendak, but it can't be as bad as you're trying to make it out to be," Haxus says.

"It's worse," Plytox says, working through the screen to the crew manifest.  He opens Sendak's file but leaves it on the profile image for the moment.  Sendak looks so _young_ in the picture, but he was still missing an eye, and that sets dread curling down Haxus's spine.  That picture has to be almost a decade old, if Haxus guesses right.

"You know why he got transferred to this ship, right?" Plytox asks.  His hand hover over the screen, ready to scroll down.

"His former crewmates assaulted him," Haxus says.

"Is that what he told you?  Because his file says--" Plytox scrolls down a bit-- "'instigated fight with crewmates, assaulted lieutenant when the fight was broken up'.  Same thing with the crew before that, actually, and both crews said the fights were either unprovoked or over something trivial."

"Forgive me my skepticism, but I've already heard Sendak's side of the story, and I wouldn't call being clubbed over the head with a blaster _trivial_ ," Haxus says flatly.

"He almost killed someone on his last crew!"

"He told me he didn't intend to!"

"Intention doesn't matter, only action--"  Plytox stops himself, takes a deep breath, and places his hand on the screen.  "Alright.  You won't believe me on this one, because he's already told you his own story.  That's fine.  But he didn't tell you what he did in training, now did he?"

Haxus narrows his eyes.  "And what does his training have to do with anything?"

"You know how the military weeds out the worst oblates before they hit higher levels of training, so they aren't wasting time and money on soldiers who will just die in their first real engagement?"  Plytox grins, showing an alarming amount of teeth.  "They take the lowest ten percent of the class and have them fight to the death.  The last oblate standing gets to move on with the rest of the class, and the others, well...they're dead."

Haxus's gut rolls.  "You're joking."

Plytox's grin widens.  "Triumph or death, Haxus.  And from that, you can probably guess what Sendak's hiding from you without me showing you."

"I don't believe you.  Sendak wouldn't--"

Plytox scrolls down.  "He _did_."

There are _pictures_ .  Haxus tastes bile in the back of his throat and swallows it back down.  He will not throw up.  He will _not_ throw up.  Void take it all, he hadn't wanted to see this--gods, the kids in those pictures couldn't be any older than his youngest siblings, all blood-splattered and torn, and Sendak in the middle of it all--it’s recognizably Sendak, with his outsized ears.  His left eye was wide, too wide, while the right was a gaping ruin of torn flesh and--

Haxus looks away.  He can't.  He’s going to vomit if he looked any longer, and he turns away from the screens, back toward the door--

And finds the current Sendak staring at him, wearing the same stricken expression his younger self on the screen behind Haxus wore.  Keraz has him by one arm and one of the other soldiers has him by the other, like they'd marched him up here to bear witness, and it takes Haxus a tick or two to realize they probably had.  He meets Sendak's gaze.

"Haxus--" Sendak croaks.

Haxus lurches backward, away from him, stumbling into Plytox, who wraps his arms around Haxus's chest to keep him upright.  Sendak's eye widens, ears lowering further, and he takes a half-step back into the hall.  Keraz and the other soldier tighten their grips, forcing him to stay.  His ears lower further, and Haxus sees his lips move, forming Haxus's name, though no sound comes out.

"Do you believe me now?" Plytox asks, loudly enough that Haxus knows all of them can hear it.  "That's not your _friend_ , Haxus.  I didn't want to tell you, but I don't want to watch him hurt you if I can help it."

Sendak shakes his head frantically.  "No.  No--"

"Oh come on, you're going to lie about it?" Keraz snaps, yanking on Sendak's arm.  The pull knocks him off-balance, and Sendak staggers forward and sinks to his knees.

"Haxus, _please_ ," Sendak gasps.  "Please--"

"He didn't tell you about this, did he?" Plytox asks gently.  "Can you really trust someone who would do something like this and then not tell you what he'd done?"

"Please--" Sendak says again, and the soldier cuffs him upside the head.

"Shut up," he hisses.  Sendak whimpers, but doesn't resist.

"Who do you believe, Haxus?  The person who _lied_ to you about their past, or the rest of us, who just want to keep you safe?" Plytox asks.

Haxus looks back and forth between them, between Sendak on the floor and Plytox, backlit by the truth.

"...I..." he says hesitantly.  "...It's a lot to process, I need time--"

"Take as much time as you need," Plytox says soothingly, rubbing at Haxus's shoulder.  "We have plenty of it."

Haxus nods and lets Plytox lead him from the room, but he doesn’t miss the flash of fangs, the _leer_ as they leave and the others begin to close ranks behind them.

* * *

They threw Sendak on the floor the second Plytox led Haxus off the bridge.  He stayed still, muscles wound tight, trying to keep his body from betraying him.  A boot nudged him in the ribs, then ground itself down on his hand, not hard enough to break bones but enough to hurt.  He bit his lip to keep from crying out.

"They aren't lying about how _unnatural_ oblates are," Meram muttered somewhere overhead.  "He wasn't even _bothered_ seeing that shit on screen."

"Nope," Keraz muttered.  A boot tapped the side of Sendak's head, and he clenched his fist to keep from lashing out.  "But then again, he wasn't exactly bothered _doing_ it either."  The boot tapped the side of his head again, more insistently.  "Were you, you bastard?"

_Don't say anything_ , Sendak thought, gritting his teeth.   _Just don't say anything.  They'll get bored and leave you alone.  Just keep quiet._  The boot tapped him again, and then kicked him.  Not hard, but hard enough to bounce his face off the cold steel.  The barest whimper got past his tight-gritted teeth, and he heard someone laugh overhead.  Another kick, this one to his ribs and much more aggressive.  Sendak refused to give them the satisfaction of a response.   _Just keep quiet._

They did get bored eventually, like he'd expected, and filed out past him.  The last person out _spat_ on him, the wad of saliva landing right behind his left ear, and the tick their bootsteps faded from his hearing he pushed himself upright and wiped at it frantically.  He felt unclean.   _Everything_ felt unclean, felt filthy and disgusting and _wrong_ , like there were insects crawling under his skin and eating at him from the inside.  He sank his claws into his palm-pads, focusing himself on the pain.  It kept him grounded, kept him from focusing on his missing eye, which throbbed, and from the places they’d planted their boots in his side.  The sharp pain was better, realer.  He exhaled shakily, then took a deep, slow breath in.  Then he pushed himself to his feet.

Sendak exited the crew manifest and shut down the screen without looking at it.  His throat felt like it was closing up on him, too tight and too hot, and he dug his claws in deeper.  He would not cry.  He would not cry.  He would _not_ .  He'd let himself be weak, and _look_ where it had gotten him.  The _look_ on Haxus's face was permanently etched into his brain.  The horror.  The disapproval.  The _disgust_.

And the worst part was, he couldn't blame Haxus, not when he could still feel the blood coagulating on his face after all this time.  He wiped at his right cheek anyway, even though his hand came back clean.

He stumbled off the bridge, unsteady on his legs.  The others were gone, back to their duties or their quarters, and Sendak stopped before he could walk past his door and go straight to Haxus's.  Void take him, he'd made himself weak.  Too reliant on someone else, someone who had done _exactly what he knew they would_ when they found out.  He sank his claws into his upper arm, deeper than they would go in his palm, and relished the pain.  Then he opened his door and slunk back into his quarters.

They felt bigger than they should have, somehow.  A chill trickled down Sendak's back, and he tucked himself into the corner of his bunk, wrapping his arms around his knees for comfort.  The room was still too big.  Blackness yawned in the corners.  Sendak tucked his face into the gap between his knees and his chest and let the sob break in his throat.  The space behind his sternum felt as if someone had hollowed it out and left him to bleed.

They'd left him to bleed _back then_ , too.  He whimpered into his knees, then sobbed again, digging his claws into his arms.  The pain didn't help like it should have.  It was wrong.  It was _all_ wrong.  He wanted Haxus.

_No, you don't_ , he thought, raking his claws down his arm.   _You don't want Haxus.  Haxus_ hates _you.  He saw the monster, and he hates you._  He choked on the next cry, trying to stay quiet.  If the others heard him--if they heard him--the next cry to break from his throat was a thin, thready wail, and then he was sobbing in earnest.  The world went narrow and dark around him, closing in like the jaws of a trap.  Fear surged up in his throat, choking his sobs to almost nothing.

There were hands on him.  Someone was touching his knees, then his forearms, tracing over the gashes his claws had left, and they were gentle.  Sendak flinched from the touch.  He'd hallucinated it, he _had_ to have hallucinated it, there was no one on the ship who would touch him now--

"Did they do this to you, or did you do this to yourself?" Haxus asked.

Sendak curled up tighter and didn't speak.

Somewhere in the dimness, Haxus sighed.  "It's alright if you don't want to speak to me," he said quietly.  "I wouldn't want to speak to me either."

He touched the edges of the cuts again, then ran his fingers over Sendak's knuckles.  Then he withdrew, and there was silence.

"...For what it's worth, I'm sorry," Haxus said.  

His voice was heavy and soft, but Sendak flinched from it regardless.  He lifted his head slightly and regarded Haxus over his knees.  "Sorry?  For _what_?"

Haxus stared back levelly, and something about his face was--Sendak wasn't sure _what_ it was, but it hurt.  "I'm sorry they did that to you.  You shouldn't have had to go through that--any of it.  And I--I'm sorry I reacted the way I did."

"Don't be," Sendak muttered and looked away.  "I told you I was a monster back at the beginning.  Now you just know what color the blood on my hands is."

"No, you let me apologize.  I'm sorry I reacted like that because it hurt you, and that's the _last_ thing I wanted to do.  I was shocked, yes, and I needed a little time to work through that information, and I was..."  A hesitation.  "...I was hurt that you didn't trust me enough to tell me yourself, and that I had to find out from someone who wanted to use your past as a weapon.  Sendak.  Look at me, please."

Sendak peered at Haxus again, and he was still wearing that look that made something in Sendak's hollow chest ache.

"I'm sorry," Haxus said again.

Sendak hesitated.  "...I'm sorry too," he whispered.

Haxus narrowed his eyes.  "What are you apologizing for?"

"You know exactly what--"

"That was _not your fault_ ," Haxus growled, and Sendak lurched back away from him.  Haxus stopped, leaned back a little, and repeated, more quietly, "That wasn't your fault.  You didn't want to do it.  They forced you to--to--you know what, but they made you do it, right?  You wouldn’t have chosen to do it if you’d had a say?"

Sendak nodded hesitantly.

"Then you weren't to blame.  You didn't have a choice in the matter."

"I could have chosen to die," Sendak said, voice cracking on the last word.

"I'm glad you didn't," Haxus replied.  A pause.  "Sendak, may I touch you?"

Sendak all but launched himself at Haxus, pressing his face against Haxus's shoulder and trying to curl up in his lap.  Another sob broke from him, and Haxus ran his hands through Sendak's ruff, purring soothingly.  Sendak sobbed harder.

"It's alright," Haxus murmured.  "It's alright, Sendak, you're alright.  I'm here, I've got you."

"Don't leave," Sendak choked out.   _Please, please--_ "Don't leave me--"

"I won't, I promise."  Haxus nuzzled the top of Sendak's head.  "I swear I won't leave you."

Eventually, though, his cries tapered off, leaving him curled against Haxus’s chest, wrung out and shaking.  Haxus carded his fingers through Sendak’s ruff and scratched behind his ears, humming something under his breath, his chest rumbling with a purr.  Sendak could hear Haxus’s heartbeat, feel the rise and fall of each breath, and somehow it soothed him.  He tried to let himself relax, but his tight-coiled muscles protested and he hissed in pain.

Evidently Haxus heard it, because he rubbed gently at the muscle of Sendak’s shoulder and said, “Alright, Sendak, can you sit up for me?”  Sendak did, pushing himself gingerly off of Haxus’s chest.  Haxus offered him a warm half-smile.  “There we go.  That’s good.  Let me see your arm, please.”

“...No,” Sendak muttered, pulling the arm he’d clawed against his chest.  It throbbed now that he was paying attention to it.  Haxus scowled.

“Sendak,” Haxus said.  “Let me see your arm.  I’d like to get that injury cleaned up before it can get infected.”  Sendak reluctantly offered his arm for Haxus’s inspection.

Haxus had a first aid kit with him, and Sendak honestly couldn’t say he would have been surprised even if he’d had the emotional energy for it.  He did tilt his ears and raise a brow though, and Haxus chuffed before taking a sanitary wipe to the cuts.

“I assumed either you or I would need it after this,” he said by way of explanation, and Sendak’s throat tightened again.

“...You know I would never hurt you, right?” he asked.  “I--they were lying to you, Haxus, I _swear_ I won’t hurt you--”

“I know, I know,” Haxus said.  “I believe you.  You’ve never given me a reason to think you would hurt me when you’re in control, but I was afraid that...well, that you might panic and lash out because you were frightened.”  He pulled a gauze pad from the kit and set it over the cuts.  “I was more worried that they’d hurt you, or that you would hurt yourself.  I wish I’d been wrong, Sendak.”

Sendak exhaled and lowered his head.  “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize for things that aren’t your fault,” Haxus said, and tied off the bandage keeping the gauze in place.

“But I--” Sendak started to protest.  Haxus cut him off, putting a finger over Sendak’s lips.

“No.  Stop.  Just--stop, please, and listen to me.”  Haxus looked him directly in the eye.  “Sendak, I think you need help.  You’re somewhere bad, and you’re hurting, and you need ways to cope with this that don’t involve you hurting yourself.  I’m going to do what I can to help you out, but you need to be willing to work with me.  Do you understand?”

“...I think so,” Sendak said hesitantly.

Haxus smiled and leaned in, pressing his forehead against Sendak’s.  “There we go.  I’m going to do my best to help you, but, listen--you need to trust me with things so I can help you, and so I don’t have to find them out from Plytox of all people.”

Sendak pulled away just enough to tuck his head under Haxus’s chin, and Haxus wrapped his arms around him and nuzzled the top of Sendak’s head.  Sendak hesitated, then asked, “...So, what did you say to him?”

Haxus sighed.  “I told him he was being a bastard, taking advantage of someone who couldn’t defend himself and isolating that person because he didn’t like him, and that if he ever tried to talk to me about you again that I was going to punch him in the face, void take the consequences.”  He chuffed, then added, “That shut him up quickly, as you’d imagine.”

“Thank you for defending me,” Sendak murmured, turning to press his face into Haxus’s collarbone.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Haxus asked gently.

“The look on your face when you saw what I did.  I thought…” Sendak hesitated.  “...I thought you hated me.”

“I have younger siblings about that age,” Haxus said.  “And my very first thought was, ‘what if it was them?’  I didn’t hate you, I was just...reeling.”

“...Oh,” Sendak said.  His face and ears went hot.  “I didn’t know.”

Haxus’s arms tightened around him momentarily.  “...The next time we have shore leave, I’m taking you home to meet my family.”

Something shivered down Sendak’s spine, and he picked his head up to look Haxus in the face.  “You’re _joking_.”

“I’m _serious_ ,” Haxus huffed.  “I’m taking you home with me.  My family’s going to love you.”


End file.
